The life of the Christian is undoubtedly a life of faith. Paul writes in Romans 1:17, hearkening also back to Habakkuk, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.'” So much of the Christian experience, the hope that we have in Christ, is rooted in what we would loosely define as faith. And yet this terminology and approach often leaves many Christians open and susceptible to attacks that the faith we hold is a “blind faith”, one that believes with a lack of evidence or in spite of contradictory evidence.
This all inevitably leads us to the important question of how do we, as Christians, truly “know what we know?” In fact, how does anyone know what they know? In philosophical terms, this is referred to as epistemology, the study of knowledge, from the Greek term ‘epistḗmē’. Everyone, no matter their religious affiliation, has a certain theory of epistemology, even though most do not consciously acknowledge or frame their thinking in those terms. But religious epistemology more specifically, how we know our religious beliefs are true, justifiable, and trustworthy, is especially important. It is what sets exclusive religious claims apart from others and also warrants our trust in the many truth claims that Christianity makes. How do we know our view of truth, history, and the spiritual realm are true and reliable?
The Importance of A Robust Religious Epistemology
I am reminded of the great Ravi Zacharias who tells the story of a question he received once in a question and answer session in which a student asked him, “how do I know that I exist?” Ravi wittingly replied, “whom shall I say is asking?” While the matter of pure existence is more a matter of ontology, the actual study of existence itself, the degree to which we can be confident that we know we exist, that others exist, and that our reason and experience is trustworthy is firmly in the realm of epistemology.
Having a rooted sense of epistemology for all truth, how we know with surety what we think we know, is not often thought about but has immediate and real-world implications for our everyday lives. For example, there are many, like the historicists of the 19th and 20th centuries, whose underlying philosophy of historical epistemology make it very difficult to say with confidence what is true from a historical sense. One can more easily adopt a position such as solipsism which would propose that we cannot definitely show that anyone other than our own selves exist or that, perhaps, the entire reality we experience is simply a complex simulation, that nothing we experience actually exists.
What we see today in regards to modernist attitudes pertaining to religion illustrates the great need for a robust religious epistemology. While simple modernism emerges in most conversations comparing things like science and religion, relativism seems to pervade much of the discussion comparing one religion to the other. Consider, for a moment, whether you’ve experienced an exchange like this in the past: “Well, personally, I believe in God, but I don’t want to push those beliefs on my children. I’d rather they come to their own conclusions about religion.” In the moment, statements like this can sound quite sophisticated and mature. But consider an alternative: “Well, personally, I believe in gravity, but I don’t want to push those beliefs on my children. I’d rather they come to their own conclusions about physics.”
The absurdity of the second statement to the average person illustrates a fundamental truth regarding religious epistemology in a secular society: that so-called “religious” truth claims belong to a sort of unique category, one in which claims are less falsifiable, less testable, and possibly even incomparable to truth claims about the “real world.” In this mindset, religious truth may be “your truth” but is not “the truth.” Many Christians may even fall into this trap and this is why religious epistemology is so important. Christian truth claims should never be understood as being “our truth” but, as Francis Shaeffer puts it, “true truth.”
Knowledge In the Science Age
Another one of the prevailing viewpoints that has taken root in many secular societies of the day is that of scientism. This is basically the idea that, though we can know truth outside of the realm of science or the scientific method, that we can only truly be certain of, or should be most certain of, that which can be “proven” by science. Undoubtedly, the practice of the scientific method and the advancement of many fields under the umbrella of the sciences have proven to be quite useful in offering insight into a great many areas of life which were previously a mystery. Medicine, astrophysics, genetics, geology, and material science has contributed to technology and our understanding of the inner workings of the natural and biological world in ways that are invaluable to us today.
But, while we may readily agree that the sciences offer much in the way of advancing our knowledge, can we depend solely on science to determine what is reliably true? Indeed if, as Stephen Hawking declared before his death, “philosophy is dead”, can science rise up in its place? The first observation to be made here is that, while many may boast that science offers an alternative to or proof against God or spirituality in general, the simple reality is that, by definition, it cannot.
The practice of science has always been limited to the physical or material world. It is, in a sense, restricted by the closed system of our known universe. Therefore, though science can shed light on religious claims which purport to show material effects of spiritual causes, it can never hope to directly evaluate spiritual truth claims themselves. And, more importantly, if indeed there is a spiritual reality, a “meta-physical” world, then any objective knowledge that could be obtained regarding that world would not itself come from science. In this case, those depending solely on scientific evaluation for their basis of knowledge might actually lead themselves away from truth, not toward it.
Additionally, science as a reliable foundation to truth actually requires some very important pre-requisites and assumptions before it can be considered as such. The difficulty with this dependency is that many of these assumptions are of a nature that cannot, themselves, be proven via science. For one, the scientific method assumes order and constancy in the universe. This also belies the ontological issue of why order even exists within creation, especially since entropy continually drives towards disorder. But the epistemological issue of knowing that order does, indeed, exist and, just as importantly, that said order extends backward into the past and will continue into the future is, ultimately, an assumption. We might say that the presumption of order and constancy in the physical world, given all of our available observation, is a “reasonable” one and most of us would agree. However, this exposes yet more underlying assumptions, mainly, that human reason is itself capable of arriving at objectively reliable conclusions. That laws of logic actually exist and correspond to reality. That our senses and the ways in which we observe and interact with the physical world are also reliable and do not change. We must assume that, at any given moment, the past actually consists of real, temporal events that occurred and are not illusionary.
We must even assume that there is truly constance of identity within each individual. If we are, indeed, purely physical beings, we know that in a very real sense the cells we possess today are not the same as those that we were once composed of. And yet we all assume a sort of consistent identity over time, that even though our physical construction constantly changes there is an element of us that is unchanging over time.
Furthermore, the belief in scientism or the supremacy of science as a method of truth is, itself, not a claim that can be arrived at using the method of science. There is no scientific test or observation that can be used in order to arrive at the scientific conclusion that scientific observations are the most reliable sort. As Greg Koukl states,”if science is the only way to truth then science itself is self-refuting because science is built on a series of truths that cannot be demonstrated by science but must be in place even for science to be valid.”
Despite these criticisms, as Christians, we can certainly still be free to recognize science for the remarkable tool that it is. In fact, through study of areas like astrophysics, we can actually observe what many conclude is the fine-tuning of the properties of the universe for the very act of observation and understanding. For instance, Earth and its solar system inhabit a unique location that makes it even possible to observe and study anything outside of our immediate astronomical world. As Hugh Ross relates, “Earth’s solar system resides in the darkest part of the Milky Way Galaxy’s life-habitable zone. And the Milky Way resides in the darkest life-habitable region of its galaxy cluster, which occupies the darkest life-habitable region of its supercluster of galaxies…the positions and characteristics of the planets are fine-tuned to provide observers on Earth with a dark enough night sky that they can measure virtually all the features of the universe and record all its history.” It is almost as though God demonstrates in His physical creation the same principle laid out in Scripture in Matthew 7:7,8: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds.”
The Roots and History of Christian Epistemology
Lucky for us, there is a rich history of scholarship within Christianity regarding how we know what we know regarding our faith. And that history has actually experienced quite the evolution in thoughts and attitudes regarding the proper balance and role of reason and revelation.
Some of the earliest theological work done in the area is found in the writings of Augustine. Augustine’s view was one of the emphasis of primary authority in Scripture. That authority, in a sense, was based upon the tradition of knowledge and testimony of events in the past that, in the thought tradition of the time, could not be verified but had to be believed. In this view, Scripture was seen to be authoritative and inerrant but not inherently credible. To warrant this credibility required signs and, for Augustine, those signs primarily included prophecy and miracles. Given that the Christian church alone enjoyed the privilege of fulfilling both miracle and prophecy, Scripture was vindicated in its testimony regarding its authority. However, seeing that prophecy and miracle fulfillment in the past suffered from a similar degree of unverifiability, he also pointed to the present miracle of the church. In William Lane Craig’s words, “he saw the very existence of the mighty and universal church as an overwhelming sign that the Scriptures are true and divine.”
Thomas Aquinas, another theological heavyweight of Christian history, also had much to say regarding Christian epistemology. Aquinas devoted a good portion of his work using ordinary reason and argumentation to give a firm knowledge foundation regarding a great many truth claims of the Christian faith, like the existence of God Himself, the purpose or destiny of man, etc. But he also developed a bit of a different role for “faith” proper when it came to matters of particular Christian doctrine or practice like the Trinity or the sacraments. In these areas, human experience and observation had little in the way of direct verification; somewhat akin to science being limited to the observable universe, such Christian concepts were simply outside or above the utility of human reason to verify.
But much like Augustine, Aquinas looked to the signs and authority of the church, miracles, and prophecy to root the authority of Scripture. And, from that authoritative Scriptural testimony, one could continue on to root those concepts that were otherwise “above logic.” As Craig distills of Aquinas’ view, “an opponent may be convinced of the truths of faith on the basis of the authority of Scripture as confirmed by God with miracles.” Under Aquinas, the faculty of faith was somewhat shifted in its role for the Christian, away from a purely subjective trust or commitment and toward a sort of separate epistemological category. This dichotomy saw faith and reason as exclusive, between truth that one “believes” and truth that one “knows”, where never the ‘twain shall meet.
During the enlightenment, these attitudes moved toward extremes, in one direction or another. John Locke laid the early foundation for Enlightenment thinkers in his dedication to religious rationalism. In his view, reason was fundamental to knowledge, even in the areas of religious knowledge. Revelation that was indeed genuine had to meet certain criteria, mainly that it must not dishonor God or natural law, that it revealed noteworthy and significant knowledge, and that it must be confirmed by supernatural signs. Above all, revelation could not contradict reason and those truths that could be confirmed by human reason were to be trusted above those that could not. Locke was extremely influential and effectively moved the needle far in the direction of rationalism for centuries to come.
This extreme rationalism was not without its counterreaction and those reactions came from a minority of thinkers in the 18th and later 20th centuries, those of the likes of Henry Dodwell. Dodwell, in the 18th century, focused inward to the subjective experience and focus of the Gospel encountered in the human heart of each of the redeemed. His appeals fell on largely deaf ears at the time but the appeal to the personal witness of the Holy Spirit can be seen in later contemporary thinkers that we will highlight in just a moment.
Contemporary Thinkers and the Faith Under Fire
One of the modern philosophical traditions we enjoy today that earlier thinkers lacked was that of the historical method. Coming to maturity in the late 19th century, it provided a framework for analyzing historical documents for credibility and trustworthiness and ushered in a new category of historical epistemology. This also naturally lead to the reevaluation of many historic texts, subjecting them to new study and criticism, and the Bible was no exception. The response to this new higher criticism of the 19th century shaped Christian epistemology in the 20th.
Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann presented their own reactions against rationalism later in the early 20th century. Barth seems to have espoused a thoroughly reformed or Calvinistic understanding of the nature of God’s revelation and religious knowledge and experience. This view emphasized that, indeed, the human will is utterly removed from any knowledge or experience of God outside of His grace and gift of faith. Without such, God is “hidden” from mankind and “meets us as the One who is hidden, the One about whom we must admit that we do not know what we are saying when we try to say who He is.” Such a view lines up well with that of the reformed concept of sovereign grace, with the knowledge of and assent to God based on the sheer power and authority of the Word of God and not of some act of the human will. Craig summarizes it such that, “when the Word of God confronts a man, he is not free to analyze, weigh, and consider as a disinterested judge or observer–he can only obey. The authority of the Word of God is the foundation for religious belief.” Related yet unique is Bultmann’s insistence, somewhat similar to Aquinas, that faith and reason are to be seen as distinct categories altogether. That, in fact, “faith, in order to be faith, must exist in an evidential vacuum.” The act of bringing Christian truths to bare with evidence would be to, in effect, destroy faith altogether.
However, in a yet further counter-correction, Wolfhart Pannenberg, a loose contemporary of Barth and Bultmann, shed new light and emphasis on the importance of rooting Christianity’s truth claims in rationality and historicity. It was his view that this “existentialist” reaction to the Enlightenment and 19th century critical analysis of the Gospel had unnecessarily weakened its authority, not strengthened it. He held that, “for much too long a time faith has been misunderstood to be subjectivity’s fortress into which Christianity could retreat from the attacks of scientific knkowledge. Such a retreat into pious subjectivity can only lead to destroying any consciousness of the truth of the Christian faith.” Indeed, we can see a bit of this subjective mentality in many of the subjective truth claims of other religions and the lack of intellectual depth exhibited by many evangelical and Protestant denominations.
The Bottom Line
I know that this is a lot to take in and we have only begun to show the rich and varied philosophical tradition of Christian epistemology. Knowing the history and variety of this tradition shows that Christian theologians have not shied away from answering these difficult questions but have struggled with them for centuries and come to satisfying, though perhaps incomplete, conclusions. In the next part of our series, we will look at the cutting edge of Christian epistemological scholarship in the present day and how we can square our philosophy with what we find in Scripture.